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I lost my decently paying job in November 2008, right before Thanksgiving. I moved in with my daughter in 2010 to care for her son since she was a single mother in the US Army. Beginning in April, 2012, I have once again lived alone. From the day I moved in with her until today, I have lost a total of 15 pounds. I now weigh a single pound more than the heaviest I was in High School. Thanks to a one-meal-a-day, spaghetti-every-day diet for the last 6 months, I now weigh 130 pounds.

You can lose weight, too, if 60 percent of your income goes to rent and another 25 percent of your income goes to gasoline to get your income in a state with one of the lowest gasoline prices in America.

Help the starving! Help the impoverished! Donate to my site, and donate big!

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Who among you remembers when MSNBC was frothing at the mouth about the TEA Partier in Arizona who had the unmitigated gall to wear an “assault rifle” on his back out in the open, in a crowd? Do you remember how MSNBC was telling all ten of its viewers that was undeniable proof of the murderous desires of the purely white TEA Party? Do you also remember that MSNBC cropped the shot of that man so closely that you could only see part of the man and the rifle? Do you also remember that, while MSNBC was warning everyone about how the WHITE TEA Partiers so the black men could likewise be afraid, that the closely cropped image of a TEA Partier with a rifle was cropped closely to hide the fact that that particular TEA Partier with a rifle strapped to his back was black? Proving MSNBC would lie and provide wholly dishonorable and deceitful video to advance its Socialist agenda?

WELL…

Mess NBC is at it again! While they claim to be covering the Republican National Convention for all ten of its viewers, it is studiously avoiding anything that would harm the Socialist Baraka Obama’s (and the rest of the Socialist leadership of the Democrat Party) propagandistic agenda. So, what did MessNBC do? In their coverage of the Republican National Convention, MessNBC studiously avoided airing any speeches by minorities!!!! Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware should be proud!!!

When popular Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz, the GOP nominee for Senate, took the stage, MSNBC cut away from the Republican National Convention and the Hispanic Republican from Texas’ speech.

MSNBC stayed on commercial through former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis’ speech, as well. Davis, who recently became a Republican, is black.

Mia Love, a black candidate for Congress in Utah, was also ignored by MSNBC.

Say, wouldn’t the practice of ignoring people of color be considered raaaaaaaaaaaacist? And what did MSNBC use as a replacement for all of these speakers last night?

In lieu of airing speeches from former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black American; Mia Love, a black candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah; and Texas senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz, a Latino American, MSNBC opted to show commentary anchored by Rachel Maddow from Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Steve Schmidt.

No doubt, they were trying to keep their 2019 17 viewers up to date with all of the antics of raaaaaaaaaaaacist Republicans, and so had no choice but to block out Republicans like Mia Love, Ted Cruz, and Artur Davis. I’ve seen news reports from Communist countries that had less Orwellian message control than this.

MessNBC didn’t bother to provide the speeches of minorities. Period. Full-stop. Why? Because the Socialist Baraka Obama (who was a registered Socialist in Chicago) has decided to wage a campaign on the over-played raaaaacist card and the over-played “war on women” lie. And MessNBC is absolutely in bed with the Socialist Baraka Obama and the Socialist leadership of the Democrat Party.

Governor Nikki Haley ROCKED THE HOUSE!!! But if you were one of the ten people who were religiously watching MessNBC, you didn’t see it. Because she was a Sikh woman and MessNBC did not want you watching a Sikh woman rock the Republican Cazbah!

Mayor Mia Love ABSOLUTELY ROCKED THE HOUSE!!! But if you were one of the ten people who were religiously watching MessNBC, you didn’t see it. Because she is a black woman born of LEGAL immigrants who have made their own way without freebies from the Government (read “everyone else”).

That BLACK WOMAN, Mia Love hates black people like herself so much that she married a white man! That white man, a Conservative Republican hates black people so much that he married one! MessNBC was right to hide Mia Love’s speech from its ten viewers because nobody should be faced with an intelligent black person who decries the Liberal hatred of all who stand in their way of ruling the ever-declining and ever-impoverished world. Mia’s YouTube video provided by mialoveinterviews. Mia Love is involved in a very tight race for Representative of the 4th District of Utah. All freedom-loving people who haven’t been devastated by the Obama economy should strongly consider donating money to her campaign.

Artur Davis ROCKED THE HOUSE, then CRUSHED THE HOUSE in his speech. Remember 2009 to 2011: lesson learned. 2012, mistake corrected. Absolutely crushingly powerful! Barack Obama is only a man I once knew! Wowzers! Coming from the former up-and-coming black Democrat and former member of the Congressional Black Caucus (is there a Congressional White Caucus, and would the Democrats inside the Congressional Black Caucus remain civil?), the man who seconded Obama’s nomination in 2008 and introduced him to the Democrat Party at their 2008 convention!

To those Democrats and independents whose minds are open to argument: listen closely to the Democratic Party that will gather in Charlotte and ask yourself if you ever hear your voice in the clamor.

Ask yourself if these Democrats still speak for you.

When they say we have a duty to grow government even when we can’t afford it, does it sound like compassion to you — or recklessness?

When you hear the party that glorified Occupy Wall Street blast success; when you hear them minimize the genius of the men and women who make jobs out of nothing, is that what you teach your children about work?

When they tell you America is this unequal place where the powerful trample on the powerless, does that sound like the country your children or your spouse risked their lives for in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Do you even recognize the America they are talking about? And what can we say about a house that doesn’t honor the pictures on its walls?

John F. Kennedy asked us what we could do for America. This Democratic Party asks what can government give you. Don’t worry about paying the bill, it’s on your kids and grandkids.

Bill Clinton took on his base and made welfare a thing you had to work for; this current crowd guts the welfare work requirement in the dead of night.

Bill Clinton, Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson reached out across the aisle and said meet me in the middle; but their party rammed through a healthcare bill that took over one-sixth of our economy, without accepting a single Republican idea, without winning a single vote in either house from a party whose constituents make up about 50 percent of the country.

You know, the Democrats used to have a night when they presented a film of their presidential legends: if they do it in Charlotte, the theme song should be this year’s hit, “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

Governor Susana Martinez ROCKED THE HOUSE!!! But if you were one of the ten people who were religiously watching MessNBC, you didn’t see it. Because Susana Martinez is a wise Latina. The NBC News website, which listed Republican speakers, didn’t even mention her. At all.

I fear some of our leaders today have lost the courage to stand up. What we have now are politicians. They won’t offer real plans, and only stand up when they want to blame someone else.

And I don’t say that just because a Democrat is in the White House, I was a Democrat for many years, so were my parents.

Before I ran for district attorney, two Republicans invited my husband and me to lunch, and I knew a party switch was exactly what they wanted. So, I told Chuck, “We’ll be polite, enjoy a free lunch, and then say good-bye.” But we talked about issues — they never used the words Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. We talked about many issues, like welfare, is it the way of life or hand up? Talked about size of government, how much should it tax families and small businesses? And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, “I’ll be damned. We’re Republicans.”

This love story is the story of the brave Texans in the City of Gonzales. When General Santa Anna demanded that they give up their guns and the cannon that guarded the city, they responded with the immortal cry “Come and take it.”

It’s the story of the greatest generation of Americans, who rose up to confront the grotesque evil that was the Nazis, and ushered in the greatest era of peace and prosperity the world has ever seen.

It’s the story of civil-rights heroes, like Dr. Martin Luther King, who stood strong against the scourge of discrimination, and bravely championed that every man and woman should be judged, not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.

It’s the story of President Ronald Reagan, who turned back the creeping growth of government and restored Morning in America. Who spoke out against the oppressive evil of communism and demanded “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

It’s the story of my Mom. Irish and Italian, working class, the first in her family to go to college – a pioneering mathematician and computer programmer in the 1950s.

It’s the story of my Dad, who was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba, beaten nearly to death. He fled to Texas in 1957, not speaking English, with $100 sewn into his underwear. He washed dishes making 50 cents an hour to pay his way through the University of Texas, and to start a small business in the oil and gas industry.

My father is here tonight. When he came to America, él no tenía nada, pero tenía corazón. He had nothing, but he had heart. A heart for freedom. Thank you, Dad.
…
This election presents a stark choice. Two visions: we can continue down the road of the Obama Democrats, towards more and more spending, debt and government control of the economy and our lives. Or we can return to the founding principles of our nation-free markets, fiscal responsibility, and individual liberty.

Unfortunately, President Obama’s campaign is going to try to divide America. They’re going to try to separate us into little groups, and try to scare everybody. They’re going to tell seniors that Medicare will be taken away, tell Hispanics that we’re not welcome here and send the Vice President to preach a message of division.
…
How do we turn things around? How do we get America back to work? President Obama thinks the answer is more and more government.

Government is not the answer. You are not doing anyone a favor by creating dependency, destroying individual responsibility.

Fifty-five years ago, when my dad was a penniless teenage immigrant, thank God some well-meaning bureaucrat didn’t put his arm around him and say let me take care of you. Let me give you a government check and make you dependent on government. And by the way, don’t bother learning English. That would have been the most destructive thing anyone could have done.

Instead, my parents worked together to start a small business, to provide for their family and to chart their own future. That’s the American dream, and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan understand that.
…
I’d like to close with asking you a few questions, with apologies to Barack Obama.

When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the first words out of my mouth were: I still think it is unconstitutional!

The leftwing blogs were merciless. Even my wife said — can’t you pleeeease count to ten before you speak?

So, I’ve had time now to count to ten and, you know what? I still think it’s unconstitutional!

Do you think Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas have changed their minds?

I think if James Madison himself — the father of the Constitution — were here today he would agree with me: The whole damn thing is still unconstitutional!

This debate is not new and it’s not over. Hamilton and Madison fought from the beginning about how government would be limited by the enumerated powers.

Madison was unequivocal. The powers of the federal government are few and defined. The power to tax and spend is restricted by the enumerated powers.

So, how do we fix this travesty of justice? There’s only one option left.

We have to have a new president!

When I heard the current president say, “You didn’t build that,” I was first insulted, then I was angered, then I was saddened that anyone in our country, much less the president of the United States, believes that roads create business success and not the other way around.

Anyone who so fundamentally misunderstands American greatness is uniquely unqualified to lead this great nation.

The great and abiding lesson of American history, particularly the Cold War, is that the engine of capitalism — the individual — is mightier than any collective.

American inventiveness and desire to build developed because we were guaranteed the right to own our success. For most of our history, no one dared tell Americans: “You didn’t build that.”

In Bowling Green, Kentucky, the Taing family owns the Great American Donut shop. Their family fled war-torn Cambodia to come to this country. My kids and I love to eat doughnuts, so we go there frequently.

The Taings work long hours. Mrs. Taing told us that the family works through the night to make doughnuts. The Taing children have become valedictorians and National Merit Scholars.

The Taings from Cambodia are an American success story so, Mr. President, don’t you go telling the Taings: “You didn’t build that.”

When you say they didn’t build it, you insult each and every American who ever got up at the crack of dawn. You insult any American who ever put on overalls or a suit.

You insult any American who ever studied late into the night to become a doctor or a lawyer. You insult the dishwasher, the cook, the waitress.

You insult anyone who has ever dragged themselves out of bed to strive for something better for themselves or their children.

My great grandfather, like many, came to this country in search of the American Dream. No sooner had he stepped off the boat than his father died.

He arrived in Pittsburgh as a teenager with nothing, not a penny. He found the American Dream: not great wealth, but a bit of property in a new land that gave him hope for his children.

In America, as opposed to the old country, success was based on merit. Probably America’s greatest asset was that for the first time success was not based on who you were, but on what you did.

My grandfather would live to see his children become doctors, ministers, accountants and professors. He would even live to see one of his sons, a certain congressman from Texas, run for president of the United States of America.

Immigrants have flocked to our shores seeking freedom. Our forbearers came full of hopes and dreams. So consistent and prevalent were these aspirations that they crystallized into a national yearning we call the American Dream.

No other country has a Dream so inextricably associated with the spirit of its people.

In 1982, an American sailor, John Mooney, wrote a letter to his parents that captures the essence of the American Dream:

“Dear Mom and Dad, today we spotted a boat in the water, and we rendered assistance. We picked up 65 Vietnamese refugees. As they approached the ship, they were all waving and trying as best they could to say, ‘Hello America sailor! Hello Freedom man!’ It’s hard to see a boat full of people like that and not get a lump somewhere between chin and bellybutton. And it really makes one proud and glad to be an American. It reminds us all of what America has always been — a place a man or woman can come to for freedom.”

Hung and Thuan Tringh are brothers and friends of mine. They came to America on one of those leaky, overcrowded boats. They were attacked at sea by pirates. Their family’s wealth was stolen. Thuan spent a year on a South Pacific island existing on one cup of rice and water each day until he was allowed to come to America. Now both of these men and their families are proud Americans. Hung owns his own business and Thuan manages a large company. They are the American Dream.

When the president says, “You didn’t build that,” he is flat out wrong. Businessmen and women did build that. Businessmen and women did earn their success. Without the success of American business, we wouldn’t have any roads, or bridges, or schools.

Mr. President, you say the rich must pay their fair share. When you seek to punish the rich, the jobs that are lost are those of the poor and middle class.

When you seek to punish Mr. Exxon Mobil, you punish the secretary who owns Exxon Mobil stock.

When you block the Keystone Pipeline, you punish the welder who works on the pipeline.

Our nation faces a crisis. America wavers. Unfortunately, we are one of a select group of countries whose debt equals their gross domestic product.

The republic of Washington and Jefferson is now in danger of becoming the democracy of debt and despair. Our great nation is coming apart at the seams and the president seems to point fingers and blame others.

President Obama’s administration will add nearly $6 trillion to our national debt in just one term.

This explosion of debt is unconscionable and unsustainable. Mr. President, we will not let you bankrupt this great nation!

Republicans and Democrats alike must slay their sacred cows. Republicans must acknowledge that not every dollar spent on the military is necessary or well-spent, and Democrats must admit that domestic welfare and entitlements must be reformed.

Republicans and Democrats must replace fear with confidence, confidence that no terrorist, and no country, will ever conquer us if we remain steadfast to the principles of our Founding documents.

We have nothing to fear except our own unwillingness to defend what is naturally ours, our God-given rights. We have nothing to fear that should cause us to forget or relinquish our rights as free men and women.

To thrive we must believe in ourselves again, and we must never — never — trade our liberty for any fleeting promise of security.

Author Paul Kengor writes of a brisk evening in small-town Illinois. Returning home from a basketball game at the YMCA, an 11 year old boy is stunned by the sight of his father sprawled out in the snow on the front porch. “He was drunk,” his son later remembered. “Dead to the world, crucified.” The dad’s hair was soaked with melted snow, matted unevenly against the side of his reddened face.

The boy stood over his father for a minute or two. He simply wanted to let himself in the door and pretend his dad wasn’t there. Instead, he grabbed a fistful of overcoat and heaved his dad to the bedroom, away from the weather’s harm and neighbors’ attention.

This young boy became the man – Ronald Reagan – whose sunny optimism and charisma shined so brightly that it cured the malaise of the late seventies, a confidence that beamed so broadly that it pulled us through a serious recession, and a faith that tugged so happily at all hearts that a generation of Democrats became Republicans.

The American Dream is that any among us could become the next Thomas Edison, the next Henry Ford, the next Ronald Reagan.

To lead us forward, away from the looming debt crisis, it will take someone who believes in America’s greatness, who believes in and can articulate the American dream, someone who has created jobs, someone who understands and appreciates what makes America great, someone who will lead our party and our nation forward.

I believe that someone is our nominee: Governor Mitt Romney.

As Reagan said, our freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. If our freedom is taken, the American Dream will wither and die.

To lead, we must transform the coldness of austerity into the warm, vibrant embrace of prosperity.

To overcome the current crisis, we must appreciate and applaud American success. We must step forward, unabashedly and proclaim: You did build that. You earned that. You worked hard. You studied. You labored. You did build that. And you deserve America’s undying gratitude. For you, the individual, are the engine of America’s greatness.

Thank you.

Because MSNBC is working very hard to lie to all ten of its viewers and pretend that only angry white men are involved in the Republican Party. MSNBC cannot at all tell the truth because the Truth absolutely destroys MSNBC’s lie-filled, hate-filled, anti-American, Socialist agenda, as provided by the Socialist in Chief, one Baraka Hussein Obama.
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Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware, has just this week hatefully attacked DNW because DNW remains anonymous. Previously, Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware cried like a baby when I refused to release the last name of an US Army officer who told a highly inappropriate joke to my daughter (who rather enjoyed the joke) but could have a career shortened to “today’s your last day” should his or he name be published.

Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware, who is in his late 70s, has decided that he wants anonymity after repeatedly giving his name out in public, but Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware demands everyone else give up his or her anonymity.

That makes Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware the worst possible person in the world, and an absolute flaming hypocritical Socialist.

HAIFA, Israel — An Israeli court rejected on Tuesday accusations that Israel was at fault over the death of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an army bulldozer during a 2003 pro-Palestinian demonstration in Gaza.

Corrie’s family had accused Israel of intentionally and unlawfully killing their 23-year-old daughter, launching a civil case in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after a military investigation had cleared the army of wrongdoing.

In a ruling read out to the court, judge Oded Gershon called Corrie’s death a “regrettable accident,” but said the state was not responsible because the incident had occurred during what he termed a war-time situation.

At the time of her death, during a Palestinian uprising, Corrie was protesting against Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

“I reject the suit,” the judge said. “There is no justification to demand the state pay any damages.”

He added that the soldiers had done their utmost to keep people away from the site. “She (Corrie) did not distance herself from the area, as any thinking person would have done.“

Emphasis mine; more at the link.

If you are stupid enough to stand in front of a moving bulldozer, and ‘dozers don’t move that fast, you deserve whatever happens to you.

Corrie’s mother Cindy told a news conference after the court’s decision that the bulldozer personnel had the “ability” and also an “obligation” to have seen that her daughter was in its path.

As it happens, I am a heavy equipment operator, and I can tell you that the operator cannot see through a steel bucket or blade. The operator knows what he is doing through seeing material move past the edge of the blade, by feel (the resistance of the material to the advance of the machine), and by experience.

The operator also “knows” what he is doing through assumptions; we assume that no one is stupid enough to stand in front of the blade. This is Jack, one of the backyard bunnies. If I walk toward Jack, he sees me as a menace to his health and life, and he hops away. Heavy equipment operators assume that people are more intelligent than rabbits, and will hop out of the way of approaching heavy equipment; apparently Jack is smarter than the late Miss Corrie was, because Jack would never have simply stood in front of a moving ‘dozer!

The Israeli court was absolutely right to dismiss the lawsuit. If Cindy Corrie wants to blame somebody for her daughter’s death, she should look in the mirror and ask herself how she managed to rear a daughter dumb enough to stand in front of a moving bulldozer.

Five years ago, I wrote an article, on the old site, Why Officer Charles Cassidy is dead. That article noted that the then-alleged, and subsequently convicted, killer of Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy had already been arrested several times, and was treated leniently:

Unfortunately, in the City of Brotherly Love, Mayor John Street’s administration, including Police Commissioner (Sylvester) Johnson and District Attorney Lynne Abraham, apparently think that law enforcement is like fishing: if the fish they catch is too small, they just throw it back into the water.

Well, if we assume that Mr Lewis actually is the killer, the city’s “catch and release” program is directly responsible for the murder of Officer Cassidy. Mr Lewis was arrested in 2005 for drug charges, including possession with intent to distribute. In other words, he was a drug dealer. Rather than do the right thing, and prosecute him to the full extent of the law, they offered him a treatment program, and when he completed it, they not only dropped the charges, but dismissed charges, including attempted theft, committed subsequently. Then, in February of this year, he got busted again on drug charges, but on October 31st, Mr Lewis was still out on the streets.

An aberration? Perhaps not. I also noted that Philadelphia Highway Patrol Officer Patrick McDonald is dead because Daniel Giddings, his killer, was treated leniently by thankfully now retired Common Pleas Court Judge Lynn B. Hamlin, who, despite Mr Giddings’ lengthy juvenile record and pleas from Assistant District Attorney Joseph Coolican to lock up Mr Giddings for as long as the law allowed, because there was “absolutely no reason to believe” it would ever be safe to release the thug back into society, sentenced Mr Giddings to the mandatory minimum of 6-to-12 years for robbing and shooting a man in the kneecaps. Then, despite him being charged 27 times with disciplinary problems in prison and spending 537 days in solitary confinement, prison officials recommended, and the state parole board accepted, that he be paroled early.

Philadelphia Police Officer Timothy Simpson is dead because officials did not try to apprehend William Allan Foster, a junkie, career thief and scofflaw from Levittown, when he failed to appear for a series of probation violations, even though the judge ordered his arrest. Mr Foster didn’t kill Officer Simpson with a gun, which he wouldn’t have been allowed to carry, but an automobile, which he wasn’t allowed to drive.

Are you starting to see a pattern here?

Well, Philadelphia Police Officer Moses Walker, Jr, is dead because, once again, the law enforcement bureaucracy didn’t do its job:

Jones is accused of killing Police Officer Moses Walker Jr. on Aug. 18, 10 days after Jones walked free from a Philadelphia prison on an order from Common Pleas Judge Susan I. Schulman.

In a statement, board chairman Michael C. Potteiger said Jones was allowed to go without the monitor because there was no telephone line in the home he had been approved to live in. A landline is needed for electronic monitoring to function.

Prisoners released to house arrest are not always monitored electronically from the moment they get out of jail, according to Potteiger’s statement.

Judge Schulman had ordered electronic monitoring of Mr Jones upon his release, but her order was not carried out. Mr Jones and an alleged accomplice, Chancier McFarland, are said to have attempted to rob Officer Walker while he was walking to the bus stop, in civilian clothes, after the end of his duty shift.² Mr Walker attempted to draw his service weapon, and was gunned down.

Schulman, who in 2008 sentenced Jones to a four-year prison term for a gun conviction, noted Jones’ juvenile record and warned him that she was not impressed with his record since had finished his sentence in October.

Jones’ juvenile record goes back to age 12, when he was charged with throwing a rock through his mother’s front door. He was arrested at 15 for selling drugs and then caught in a stolen Jeep.

His first gun arrest was when he was 17, when officers said they caught him with a loaded .38-caliber revolver.

“To see that I am concerned about you would be an understatement,” Schulman told Jones.

That timeline might seem confusing, but there’s more to it: Mr Jones had been arrested in February on armed robbery charges, and those charges were dropped, but he was being held on violation of probation. The Inquirer did not specify why the charges were dropped, but both the parole officer and judge had to know about the charges.

The real question is not why the law enforcement bureaucracy let Mr Jones back on the street without the ordered electronic monitoring which had been ordered by Judge Schulman, but why parole officer Rodriguez recommended, and Judge Schulman accepted, releasing him under any conditions? Why wasn’t this man in jail on the day that he shot Officer Walker? He could have been, and quite obviously should have been, but he wasn’t, and now yet another Philadelphia Police Officer is dead.

Judge Schulman said that she was concerned about releasing Mr Jones. Why, then, did she release him? By now, it ought to be obvious: when you have these thugs in custody, thugs with long rap sheets, you should lock them away for every last second that the law allows. The Judge gave Mr Jones a third or fourth chance, and he was out of jail for only ten days before he was attempting armed robbery on the streets.³ These thugs should be kept in jail, not to try to rehabilitate them — that sure doesn’t seem to work — but to keep them off the streets, away from the public. The longer they are locked up, the less time that they have available to commit crimes out on the streets.

Assuming that he is the killer of Mr Walker, Mr Jones is the man who is responsible for the death of the officer. But he was, in a very real sense, enabled by an overly lenient criminal justice system in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, one which had the power to keep him behind bars, and chose to do otherwise. Parole officer Rodriguez and Judge Schulman, and the people in the system which allowed Mr Jones out on the street without the court-ordered monitoring device, will pay no criminal penalties for their terrible decisions and their workplace negligence, but I hope that they are miserable right now, are crying themselves to sleep every night, knowing that they failed, knowing that their actions, or inaction, contributed to putting a 19-year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department six feet under.
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Cross posted on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.
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¹ – Most links to stories in The Philadelphia Inquirer become inactive after a few weeks. All links in this article were active on the date that this article was published.
² – The Inquirerreported on Friday that, according to “police sources,” Mr Jones confessed to the killing of Officer Walker.
³ – It might have been less than ten days, probably was less than ten days, but the last incident is the one we know about.

First, OF&F’s gunrunning has left hundreds of murder victims in its wake, including two US government agents, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and ICE agent Jaime Zapata. It’s likely that the guns trafficked by the ATF in 2009 will claim more victims. Thus far, there is no indication that the Obama administration has done so much as demote anyone over the program. Administration officials lied to Congress about the nature of the program and their knowledge of it, which is the proximate cause for the contempt citation.

If Congress can’t access documents to investigate executive-branch malfeasance of this scope, especially with the added dollop of perjury and obstruction of justice vis-a-vis the House Oversight Committee, then Congress will have no real ability to conduct oversight of executive-branch activities at all. That plus the extremely shaky claim of executive privilege puts the Obama administration on course for a big loss, and a very large precedent on Congressional subpoenas that both parties will celebrate and have cause to regret in the future.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) sent a letter to DOE Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday, calling out him and his Department for apparently providing false testimony to Congress concerning the energy loan program.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, along with Subcommittee Chairmen Jim Jordan and Trey Gowdy, asked Secretary of Energy Steven Chu to clarify apparently false testimony to Congress about efforts to conceal documents from investigators and White House involvement in the Department of Energy Loan Program that used taxpayer funds to support companies including Solyndra. The request comes after the Committee obtained documents from individual non-official e-mail accounts contradicting the testimony.

“Recently-obtained documents show DOE officials frequently used Yahoo! and Gmail to communicate about the loan guarantee program,” Issa, Jordan, and Gowdy wrote to Chu. “This use of non-government e-mail accounts for official business may have violated the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and the Federal Records Act (FRA). The documents also show that testimony given to the Committee by current and former DOE officials, including you, was inaccurate, and may have been intentionally false.”

While Clinton was doing his perjury thing about a soiled dress and a ruined cigar, the Obama administration is doing their perjury thing about corrupt Chicago-style “pay to play” billions of Federal Government dollars to Democrat insiders and thousands of guns that were intentionally run across the border and have been used to murder hundreds of people (with hundreds more murders sure to follow). And the Leftist “mainstream media” is working overtime to hide all that information to a sheep-like populace in their efforts to cover for the criminally corrupt and murderous Obama administration.

I expect this to play out even after Obama loses re-election, with many Democrat operatives doing the perp-walk for their many Federal crimes. There is a non-zero possibility that Obama could do a tall stack of 11th hour Presidential Pardons, but I don’t believe the likelihood is all that high.

1) Pardoning a pile of administration officials would put a permanent taint on Democrats in general, greatly harming their chances at majority or the Presidency for years to come. But I don’t believe Obama is at all concerned with other Democrats; only with himself. So this issue is a weak point against pardons.

2) Pardoning a pile of administration officials take the Fifth Amendment off the table. Nobody who has been immunized against his or her previous crimes can avoid testifying about his or her previous (now immunized) crimes, thus the conspiratorial nature of their crimes combined with unpardoned people (such as Obama himself, since he cannot pardon himself) is suddenly available to the Courts. This is the major reason why I believe Obama will not issue a raft of pardons for his administration team. He cannot afford to take the specter of a long prison sentence away from any member of his staff. It would spell doom for him. And, again, while wholly unimportant to Obama himself, it would crush Democrat political hopes for years to come.

So, yes, look for a nice long list of Obama administration types to do the perp walk for their many corruptions and Federal Felonies sometime in the future.

Just an hour ago, Mitt Romney announced Representative Paul Ryan as his running-mate. It was one of the wisest decisions Mitt Romney could make, as Paul Ryan is a bona fide TEA Party Commonsense Constitutional Conservative and already has a Budget blueprint that can turn this Titanic around and away from the iceberg known as Obama’s Democrat-enabled Cloward-Piven strategy. A great many Conservatives were understandably disgusted by the Romney-squish pick, and many — myself included — declared a resoluteness not to vote for Romney due to the garbage Romney brings to the table. Ryan does not bring any of that garbage to the table, at all. In fact, Ryan has a long history of fighting to throw that garbage in the garbage heap, where it belongs.

The Ryan selection will energize many of the demoralized TEA Party Commonsense Constitutional Conservatives, who will now be willing to “crawl a mile through broken glass” to vote for Ryan and will man the phones and pound the pavement to GOTV (get out the vote) for the Real Conservative and Real Patriot, Paul Ryan for Vice President. Yes, today, Romney’s chances of winning the Presidency and throwing the Socialist Constitution and Federal Law violator out of the White House has improved greatly.

Also, Romney again vowed to repeal ObamaCare, which is a good thing, considering his campaign’s foul-up earlier in the week. And Romney declared “we will once again return Work to Welfare” (my recollection of what I heard on my drive home from work), a very direct attack against Obama’s Constitution-violating and Federal Law-violating waivers of work requirements for people (very clearly and up-front including illegal aliens) to suck on the government teet.

Romney mentioned Obama’s lowest of low-brow campaign tactics (the tactics which Washington Post, CNN, and other Leftist media outlets have been shredding, giving Obama and his Super PAC multiple “four pinnochios” and “pants on fire” awards for flat-out lying) and declared his campaign would, instead, be aspirational and his administration would return America to its former greatness after 3.5 years of decline.

All in all, with his speech and his selection of Ryan, Romney’s appearance at the USS Wisconsin in Virginia was a major success for America and a major heartache for the Socialist Obama, the Democrat National leadership, Democrats in Congress, and Democrats down-ticket. We won’t see the 700-seat flip from Democrat to Republican we saw in 2010, but we will see a much larger than normal coat-tail flip. Perhaps 300 seats in toto going from Democrat to Republican on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of this year. More seats following shortly thereafter, as Democrats flip to Republican after yet another TEAnami.

I said I would not vote for Romney and gave my very specific reasons. Now, I gave evidence for some of my reasons on Patterico’s Pontifications previously (I completely forget which thread) and Daleyrocks provided information that counters my information, causing doubt in my position on that issue. Let me give a couple general reasons for my position (which Daleyrocks helped to waver):

1) If you cannot get the baby-murdering issue right, what morally imperative issue can you get right?
2) If you cannot even counterfeit a Bell Curve Tenther position well enough to hoodwink Tenthers — greater amperage of fail with his very recent arm-twisting of Republicans to vote to give the President authority to appoint without Senate approval nearly 200 more Government positions which were previously “nominate and Senate advise and consent” positions — why should any Constitutionalist vote for you?

Paul Ryan could be a reason. There isn’t much better than Paul Ryan. Of my 5 endorsements, 2 are clearly better (Palin and West), 1 is possibly better (Cruz) and the other two are likely equal (Love and Radtke). But a Paul Ryan is a rare find. The 50-karat blue diamond.

If I vote Republican and not Third Party this cycle, it will be just like last time. I will vote for Paul Ryan just like I voted for Sarah Palin. I will not vote for Mitt Romney, just like I did not vote for John McShame.

I don’t know. I feel alright. Pretty good in fact. So what am I doing putting this up for?

See I was exploring the odd corners of the Internet and dragging a line through YouTube for jazz tunes, when one link led to another – as so often is the case – and I came across this image of a little Euro-Nebbish (alright so I’m not an expert in Yiddish) looking guy and a woman who I took to be a late 1960’s Nashville Grand Old Opry star.

Was Gotta Fertig Gnew

Well, it turns out that the guy is a Belgian harmonica and guitar player who had a brush with fame in the US at one point, and that the woman is Danish. Toots Thielemans on that most annoying of instruments, the harmonica, and a quite good singer whose name sounds something like Brigitte or Bridget Lustig.

Fertig Gnewww!
So what’s the point? Other than that she does have mighty big hair piled atop of a very attractive face?

If you are willing, give a listen (that’s Nashville inspired talk) to her speaking voice, and then contrast it with her singing accent.

I don’t think that even a dialects expert could be certain that this woman was not an American. And, if you tolerate Samba flavored early 1960’s pop music well, you might want to watch the video for a little longer than it takes to do only that.

Oh, what I was looking for, which I think I may have already placed in a comments section. Well, you won’t want to miss it. John Coltrane, Germany, 1960.

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By now we all know that what the Prez was intending to say was that it was some enabling infrastructure, material and presumably social as well, that the proud entrepreneur didn’t build.

No, while Mr. Businessman might have, you know, taken an idea provided to him by others and run with it, his success was the result of a collective effort channeled through taxes and enabled by the grace of a supportive government harnessing the collective and synergistic energies of every last one of us, no matter how humble.

Why, so it is now and so it always has been … for everything important at least.

Another Government Sponsored Enterprise?

Well, no actually. Ok they used Weather Bureau data for information on where to find a windy spot in the region Chanute suggested, and a Coast Guardsman took the picture.

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As I only have a couple of comments to drop off I am going to try out the new QuickPress publication window.

Dana Pico’s recent post on the essence of liberalism, struck a familiar chord for those of us here.

Because of the peculiarly shifting claims of Progressivism, it’s a topic, in all of its aspects, we have been giving more thought to in recent years as we ponder the question of what they really want, and when if ever will they be satisfied.

But covering this topic comprehensively and with full references would involve me in an extremely time consuming project which, in the final analysis, would merely represent comments and arguments I have made elsewhere; particularly on John’s sister site.

So I am instead going to cut to the chase here – almost – with my question, and I’ll assume that any of the folks who might read this are already familiar with the key intellectual and anthropological concepts that mark the fracture line between the bent of conservationism, and libertarianism, and traditionalism, on the one hand, and intellectual progressivism, on the other.

Philosophically, the prime concepts which the militant progressive endorses as settled matters of fact (though they may be logically contradictory once extrapolated) and as being properly conditioning for the resolution of all questions of human value and social ordering, are principally the following: monistic materialism (only matter whatever that is, is real, and it is all that exists); radical nominalism (there are no real essences or categories, just arbitrary names applied to disparate individuals); values nihilism (moral values are unreal as objective imperatives); the instrumentality of reason (reason is properly understood as a servant of impulses, not their judge); the illusion of an enduring self (self-explanatory); and, the denial of (a) that teleology is a real phenomenon, or, (b) that insofar as it exists, that it is useful for arbitrating any important questions.

Anthropologically – loosely speaking – they would include: evolution not so much as a description of a material process, but as a grand explanatory paradigm; the primacy of the unconscious as the wellspring of motivation, whether the Freudian unconscious, or the evolutionary psychology version, or some other (remember what I said about internal contradictions); ethically descriptive and morally prescriptive utilitarianism (which no liberal pretends to believe in anymore but which nonetheless serves as their primary social interpretive principle) and, spanning all of these as an overarching axiom, the ontological primacy of appetite per se for all “sentient beings”.

Now, assume all of the overt and implied premises above to be “true”, or at least as deployed in a kind of web-like filter which conditions the sorts of conclusions which sift out when we pose questions about what is, and about what ought to be.

What, in light of all of this, and at core, is all the liberal/progressive talk of community, and sharing, and sacrifice, and evolving values, really supposed to be about?

What (given that the concept of the human person is itself largely dissolved by their own conceptual acids) is it all – the progressive agenda – supposedly in aid of?

What is it, that they are demanding our unconditional allegiance to?

And if they cannot say for certain where they are going, or what they will find when “they” get there, or even if “they”, once they get “there” will be anything resembling the “they” that begins the journey: why should they expect that anyone would want to follow them “there” anyway?

Politically, they ask for, they demand, our “allegiance” and our “solidarity” with them.

Considering the corrosive and deconstructive logical implications of their own interpretive principles, they demand allegiance to what, ultimately, and solidarity with what, exactly?